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The Governor of the North West Region has through the Secretary General at his office signed a press release calling on school Proprietors, Administrators, Parents and Guardians to stay calm and steadfast as special measures have been taken to protect Teachers, Students, Pupils and School Premises.
This comes 48 hours after five students were reportedly kidnapped in broad daylight at Government Bilingual High School (GBHS) Atiela in Nkwen, Bamenda III Subdivision of the North West Region.
According to the release, the Governor brings to the knowledge of the public that activists effectively attempted such an act but following the spontaneous collaboration of the community and timely intervention of forces of law and order, no student was kidnapped.
But MMI was contacted by a student of GBHS Atiela who narrated what he called horror experience;
“It was between 9 and 10:00am Friday, October 19, when “the guys” came to Lower Sixth Arts class and picked up 6 students. Before their arrival, the School Principal had been alerted and he notified the gendarmes. The guys came from the big hill behind the school which is bushy. As the guys left, on their way back with the kidnapped students, the military arrived and started firing nonstop. As they escaped with the students, one of them (a girl) managed to escape…. Later on the military stopped and returned to the school. The escapee girl seemed to have a problem with the leg after she fell….the school treated her and plastered the wounds on her knees….. The principal and other teachers called on the students on campus to remain calm. After a while, some parents stood at the gate requesting to take their children home. But the school administration refused as a way of protecting their students until the parents had to insist….Several students too flooded the gate to leave. The pressure mounted on the administration as both the students and parents were protesting. This lasted for some hours until the gate was opened at about 1:30pm. It should be noted that the guys would have taken the students away without any noise like gunshots… it’s only the military who were firing.”
The student who spoke on anonymity, later told Mimi Mefo info; “I cannot return in School now, unless i am sure everything has returned to normal”
The school bus of GBHS Atiela was burnt in 2017 at the school premises. This recent attempt on the school, adds to the several attacks on Teachers, Students, and Schools infrastructures within the North West and South West Regions as the Anglophone crisis drags on.
Ma Stey
